balloon

The winds were so strong in Manhattan during the annual parade, that the people walking with the Barney float lost control. The giant balloon swayed into a street light, puncturing a giant hole in Barney's side.

Here's a picture of professional cluster-balloonist Jonathan Trappe flying in a house over the city of Leon in Mexico during the last week's Leon International Balloon Festival. While this isn't the first time we've seen real life tributes to the famous floating house from Pixar's 2009 animated adventure film Up, Trappe became the first human to travel aboard such device.

Beautiful Pipedream of the Day is a new feature series devoted to showcasing a variety of visual artworks, films, music and literature in the world of surrealism and futurism.

Castle of Vooruit is an outdoor balloon installation created by Kurdish-Turkish artist Ahmet Ogut of a gigantic boulder (8 meters in diameter) and a replica of the Belgian landmark and historic arts center Vooruit on its top, all floating at a height of 11 meters above the ground. Unmistakably reminiscent of Belgian painter Rene Magritte's surreal work La Chateau des Pyrenees, Ogut's helium-filled artwork was first revealed earlier this year during the TRACK art festival in May.

In celebrating the upcoming release of The Hobbit, Utah-based Balloon artist Jeremy Telford turned his family living room into an authentic hobbit hole using 2,600 hand-pumped balloons over three days in about 40 hours of work. If you're curious about the process, be sure to check out the behind-the-scenes video!